Rutgers, NJPIRG announce awarding of 32 textbook grants

"NJPIRG Students has researched the issue of high textbook prices, according to the release, and last year the librarians at Rutgers began a new initiative incentivizing professors to switch to open textbooks.

The program awards 32 grants worth $1,000 each to faculty and instructors across the university's three campuses who chose to adopt, remix or create a free or low cost textbook, as an alternative to traditional course materials, according to Rutgers' website.

Over the two years the program has been running, $1.6 million has been saved by students through the grants, according to the release. About a quarter of professors are adopting open materials this current semester, with most of the others putting these books into use for the fall 2017 semester."